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Thursday, 25 June 2009

[205] Che Part 2: Guerilla (2008) Review

Here is my review of the second Che movie, Guerilla. A crucially different film from the first, which I probably prefer, if ever so slightly.

Che Part 2: Guerilla is, on a very basic level, a harder film to sink into than The Argentine. Whereas the first part had the benefit of its dual narrative structure, which gave it a feeling of space, context and room to breathe, Part Two is single-minded in its storytelling. After a quick series of scenes in Castro's Cuba, and La Paz, Guevara joins up with the Bolivian revolutionaries in the jungle. For the most part, the film retains this perspective, doggedly mimicking the stifling drudgery of the guerillas' progress.

Che's final campaign in Bolivia, documented in his Bolivian Diary, was crucially different from the Cuban Revolutionary War. It was almost doomed from the start, with the various left-wing political groups being disparate and unwilling to support armed action. Likewise, the local population, in Che's mind the source of any revolution's power, proved unreliable and suspicious of their cause. The soldiers themselves weren't as united, or passionate in their mission. And, to make matters worse, the involvement of American-trained anti-Guerilla forces gave the revolutionaries - starving, divided and listless - a real, embittered enemy to contend with.